It is a large, up to 35 cm long, terrestrial forest bird with a dark reddish brown plumage, grey head, red bill and legs, brown iris, bare red orbital skin and rufous grey below.

The handsome spurfowl is distributed in mountain forests of eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, southwest Uganda and borders between Burundi and Rwanda.

The handsome spurfowl was described in 1908 by the German ornithologist Anton Reichenow from a specimen collected on Mount Sabyinyo in the Virunga Mountains.

[4] Although locally common across much of its range, and evaluated as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

[6] The research concluded that a reanalysis of the status of the handsome francolin could be justified in the light of its apparent strong preference for montane bamboo forest, which is a rare and patchy habitat.